Amanda Lindhout is a Canadian journalist, public speaker, and philanthropist. Lindhout was born in 1981 in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. She spent much of her youth reading National Geographic Magazine, which instilled in her a burning desire to travel. She used her savings from her job as a cocktail waitress to finance trips around the world, including conflict zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. While working for Iran’s state television Press TV in Iraq, she was taken to the Sadr Party headquarters and questioned about her political affiliations. Two days after arriving in Mogadishu, Somalia, on August 23, 2008, Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, a freelance Australian photojournalist, were kidnapped by teenage insurgents from Hizbul Islam. While in captivity, Lindhout was repeatedly tortured and gang-raped. Initially, her kidnappers demanded a ransom of $ 2.5 million which was later lowered to $ 1 million. On June 10, 2009, CTV News received a phone call from a tearful Lindhout who seemed to be reading a statement: "My name is Amanda Lindhout and I am a Canadian citizen and I've been held hostage by gunmen in Somalia for nearly 10 months. I'm in a desperate situation. I'm being kept in a dark, windowless, room in chains without any clean drinking water and little or no food. I've been very sick for months without any medicine.... I love my country and want to live to see it again. Without food or medicine, I will die here." On November 25, 2009, after 460 days as a hostage, Lindhout and Brennan were released following a ransom payment made by their families through a private firm. In 2010, Lindhout founded the Global Enrichment Foundation , offering university scholarships to women in Somalia. In response to why she established the Foundation despite her kidnapping, Lindhout told the CBC's The National "You can very easily go into anger and bitterness and revenge thoughts and resentment and 'Why me?' ... Because I had something very, very large and very painful to forgive, and by choosing to do that, I was able to put into place my vision, which was making Somalia a better place ... I've never questioned whether or not it was the right thing to do ... What else to do after the experience that I had, than something like this?" In 2013, Lindhout released a memoir, a New York Times bestseller, co-written with journalist Sara Corbett, titled A House in the Sky, recounting her experience as a hostage.